1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to software installation in data processing systems and in particular to progress indicators for software installation. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to displaying a meaningful progress indicator for a software installation program when one or more underlying install routines do not interact with the primary installation program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Installation programs, which load other applications onto a data processing system and perform any necessary setup or configuration changes, are typically written for a specific application. The actual software copying is performed by the installation program, which is aware of which files must be installed and can determine the size of those files. For such installation programs, displaying a progress indicator may be based simply on a determination of how far along the installation process has proceeded or of the size of the files installed versus the total size of all files to be installed.
In some instances, however, an installation program may not directly control the copying of the software from the installation media to the data processing system. Instead, the installation program may perform only some of the actual copying, while invoking other installers to copy specific portions of the software to be installed. This may occur, for instance, when loading "bundled" software onto a new data processing system. This may involve loading an operating system as well as one or more applications from a third party vendor with each application having its own install routine called by the primary installation program.
In such cases, however, the primary installation program may be unaware of the number or total size of files to be copied for a particular application, or of what task the called install routine is currently performing, how far the called install routine has progressed, or how much the called install routine has yet to perform. This makes it challenging for the primary installation program to display a meaningful progress indicator accurately informing the user of how far installation has progressed.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a method of displaying a progress indicator for an installation program which does not interact with one or more underlying install routines during installation.